


the faithful and the faithless

by cassandor



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Jyn Erso-centric, Missing Scene, POV Jyn Erso, The Force, Tumblr Prompt, or the aftermath of it, the eadu argument
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 01:17:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11093877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandor/pseuds/cassandor
Summary: for @jynappreciationweek day one: faith. the missing keystone of rogue one ft. chirrut





	the faithful and the faithless

**Author's Note:**

> how does jyn, cynic extraordinaire, go from being self-serving to the champion of the rebellion, even after galen’s death destroys her? how does cassian go from telling jyn about hope to “her faith carried him with her”?

After years of feeling nothing, she now feels too much. Too much, too deeply, too quickly. It fills her being, too much for mere blood and sinew and muscle and bone to contain. And so, she shatters. 

She shatters like the glass under her fist. Into frigid, jagged, burning, bloody pieces. 

It’s all Galen’s fault. For leaving her with Saw. For loving so deeply. For sending that message. For dying in her arms.

It’s all Cassian’s fault. For dragging her back into this mess. For taking that order. For _disobeying_ that order. For caring too deeply. For clashing with her. 

She thought _feeling_  was something she neatly packed away in a box and kicked into the recesses of her brain. 

Apparently, she was wrong.

She burns with anger, she burns with hatred, she burns with despair.

And then she is empty, the only sensation she feels is the stinging of glass shards and the suffocating sogginess of her rain-soaked jacket.

* * *

 

“Need a little help with that?” 

Jyn looks up from her seat on the floor at the source of the voice. It’s Chirrut, a cheery but solemn look on his face, his eyes eerily looking in her direction, as he elegantly steps over the broken shards of glass splayed around her.

“No,” she says bluntly, but then the cuts really start to sting and she sighs. He gives her a small smile before revealing a medkit that seemingly materialized out of nowhere. He unzips the bag and silently pulls out the bacta spray, his fingers deftly searching in the bag and plucking out the sterile bandages. Jyn watches the blind man work, mesmerized. 

“This will burn a little at first,” he says. Jyn nods and winces when he sprays the  cuts on her hands. “Everything hurts before healing,” he adds. Masked wisdom from a hurting warrior. 

Chirrut is right, and once the burning sensation subsides the pain begins to fade away. He begins unspooling the wound up bandages. Jyn mouth quirks into a small smile at the sight. 

He takes her hand in his, flipping it over so the palm faces upward. “I can read fates, you know,” he grins, tracing the lines on the palm of her hand.

“Really?” Jyn’s voice sounds ragged, most likely from her shouting match with Cassian, though the fact she had cried herself hoarse wouldn’t have helped. 

“I’m kidding. There are some that swear that your fate is written right here,” he taps her palm, “but I believe it is written here.” He raises a palm to his heart. 

Normally Jyn would roll her eyes at such a statement, but her kyber pendant burns a little more brightly against her heart, and the earnestness in Chirrut’s smile warms her. “Really? I thought you trusted in the Force?”

Chirrut laughs. “Having faith in yourself and having faith in the Force aren’t all that different. One leads to another. Everyone has faith in something, it’s what pushes them forward.” Jyn’s face contorts, and she starts twirling her kyber pendant in her free hand. Chirrut somehow picks up on her confusion and adds: “You just don’t know what you believe in anymore. But you will. Just think about it.”

She does. Galen had a reverent faith in his science, and in the Rebellion. Saw did too, once, until he didn’t anymore. Jyn… well Jyn had faith in her parents, who abandoned her, and Saw, who abandoned her. After that, she only had faith in the only person who would never leave her: herself.

“You’re lying to yourself, you know,” Chirrut says tentatively, wrapping the bandages around her hand. “You’re not as self serving as you think.”

It’s what Cassian had hinted at earlier. A low grumble forms in the back of her throat. “I only care about myself. I can’t trust anyone else.” She waits a moment, watching Chirrut at work, and then says: “There’s no point in stealing from the poor. They don’t have anything. That’s why I always stole from Imperials. That’s where all the credits are.” 

Chirrut looks up in her direction. “I didn’t realize trying to overthrow an Imperial governor was self serving,” he says, then returns nonchalantly to his work.

Jyn stills, the kyber frozen between her fingers. How did he know about that? “He kept getting in my way.”

Chirrut grins. “Ah. Well, if you don’t have faith in anything but yourself, why do you still have that kyber necklace?”

That tears her defenses down. She glances over to the pendant firmly grasped between her fingers, not wanting to let it go. _Why did she?_  

Chirrut pats her bandaged hand gently. “I think my work here is done. I’ll leave you alone to think.” He gets up and leaves, cloak sweeping across the broken glass. 

Jyn thinks. 


End file.
